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Post by Tim on Nov 7, 2019 16:27:27 GMT
During the EU Referendum I rapidly got sick of the phrase 'Take Back Control'.
Sadly it's now resurfaced a few times.
However, the new one I find MUCH more grating is 'Let's Get This Done', also altered slightly to 'Let's Get Brexit Done'.
I've yet to hear an interview with a Conservative candidate where they've failed to shoehorn this, slightly awkwardly, into their spiel several times.
Oddly I haven't noticed anything quite so obvious from the other parties (yet).
Anybody got some?
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Post by michael on Nov 7, 2019 16:35:59 GMT
They say it because it works (apparently). I remember Andrea Leadsom repeating the Take Back Control (TBC, appropriately enough) mantra after EVERY statement she made during one of the debates and it became a fingers down the blackboard type saying.
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Post by johnc on Nov 7, 2019 16:36:35 GMT
Not a catchphrase but a word..."Austerity". Used over and over again to explain what happens when you are left with an economy reeling from many years of Labour mis-management and overspending. However the spin always seems to say it's someone else's fault.
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Post by racingteatray on Nov 7, 2019 17:04:26 GMT
As per an excellent article by Robert Shrimsley in today's FT: "Leaving on WTO terms". ""I think we should just leave on WTO terms" said the man on Question Time; and a woman at a dinner party; and an audience member at a Tory fringe meeting; and a bloke in a pub during a TV election vox pop. All these people have one thing in common. They have literally no idea what WTO terms involve.
There can be surely no greater indicator of a malaise in the body politic than the widespread use of phrases such as "WTO terms" in normal life. I got to the age of 52 before the World Trade Organization intruded on my social conversations.
Today, it seems hard to recall a time before people confronted by a BBC camera crew in a town centre did not instinctively reach for WTO terms. Now, however, it is used by Brexiters to explain why the UK need not fear leaving the EU without any new trading arrangements in place.
It is clear British society will not return to normal until this and other tell-tale phrases such as "GATT 24", "frictionless border", "Norway option" and "Cambridge Analytica" have ceased to pepper the national conversation.
But while all these phrases are creeping into the public discourse, none rankles more than "WTO terms". Whenever I hear someone assuring us that a post-Brexit UK would be fine trading on WTO terms, I feel an immediate urge to test them.
"What about the rules of origin requirements?”; “What’s the difference between WTO rules and WTO terms?; “When you say we are already trading on WTO terms, you do understand that that is as a member of the EU and with all the benefits of all its existing trade deals”; and – my favourite – “Do you know how many other nations trade solely on WTO terms?” (Answer – maybe Mauritania, but really none).
This phrase is now thrown around with all the casual air of a dad trying to sound hip by mentioning the latest teenage craze. More often than not it is simply something they heard their favourite Brexiter say on Politics Live.
The effect is to say: “Don’t mess with me, I studied economics under Mark Francois”. (This is not the place to go into why a “clean WTO-terms Brexit” is a bad idea, beyond noting that even Michael Gove is not keen.)
But if the phrase is to be adopted widely, it needs to be used in its new sense: as an incomprehensible and essentially empty, catch-all excuse for doing whatever you want.
In an effort to broaden its use, can I suggest the following: you are not littering, you are recycling on WTO terms. Stopped by the police for going the wrong way down a one-way street? You were simply taking advantage of Most Favoured Driver status, as set out in schedule six of the General Agreement on Traffic and Taking the Piss.
Shoplifting is merely paying on WTO terms, sneaking out of the office at 4pm is working on WTO terms and flashing is sunbathing on WTO terms. There’s also using it to win an argument by making stuff up – aka debating on WTO terms. Mary Poppins plumped for “supercalifragilistic” when stumped for an answer. Now the UK’s pub bores have something much shorter but every bit as expialidocious.
Before any accuses me of elitism, let me stress than I could not tell you the full consequences of trading on WTO terms – but that is because its principles on trade are set out in some 30,000 pages of text including 500 different agreements.
The mechanisms of trade arrangements are – what’s the technical term? – flipping complicated. So complex that the WTO’s own booklet “Understanding the WTO” runs to 112 pages.
In other words, unless the person you are talking to is a bona fide trade expert, the correct response to the deployment of the phrase “WTO terms” is “Oh yeah, and which terms are those then?”. There are levels of expertise here and having read one article by Roger Bootle in the Sunday Telegraph does not count as any of them.
Perhaps this, then, is the final use of the phrase. Talking about Brexit, on WTO terms.” |
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Post by racingteatray on Nov 7, 2019 17:09:35 GMT
Although the one that really sets my teeth on edge is "The Will of the People".
Which we are told is to be re-opened and read only after our national funeral.
Alas poor Britannia, they will say, she left only debts.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2019 17:25:33 GMT
How about, "We fuck it up, so you don't have to"..... It just about say's how I feel about it all.
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Post by Stuntman on Nov 7, 2019 20:21:53 GMT
Although the one that really sets my teeth on edge is "The Will of the People". Which we are told is to be re-opened and read only after our national funeral. Alas poor Britannia, they will say, she left only debts. I agree with you. It's the will of some of the people at that particular time. Also, any phrases about the 'democratic mandate' or some such, with regard to that particular result in 2016. But none of this is surprising. Most people don't really want or care for anything that they actually need to think hard about, so most things in politics become reduced to a lowest common denominator soundbite, which is then regurgitated by the stuffed suits and rosettes at every opportunity. |
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Post by Tim on Nov 8, 2019 9:32:06 GMT
Andrea Leadsom was really terrible at shoehorning the 'Take Back Control' phrase, it was as if she could never think of an good way to integrate it into her speeches and just chucked it out there at the end.
I imagine her at home asking the kids if they want gravy with their chips and then saying the phrase after that!
Some minor Tory minister was getting interviewed on R4 this morning and I could feel the buildup to 'Lets Get This Done' and she somehow failed to say it (although she did say something like 'we need to get on with Brexit').
My teeth were at the point of grating!
I'm looking forward to something piss-poor from Labour.
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Nov 8, 2019 10:30:03 GMT
I think you only have to look across the Atlantic at the success of the "Make America Great Again" slogan which, no doubt, will be followed by "Keep America Great", Obama's "Hope and Change", or even further back in the UK to 1978/79; "Labour Isn't Working", to see that what you need is a catchy 3 or 4 word slogan and keep repeating it to drill it into the electorates' heads. Boris has decided his is "Get Brexit Done!".
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Post by ChrisM on Nov 8, 2019 16:15:59 GMT
Get Brexit? Dung
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Post by Roadsterstu on Nov 8, 2019 20:27:06 GMT
We are in the midst of yet another reinvention at work. I've lost count of how many times we have reinvented how we supposedly need to "police". Apparently demand changes after about 3 or 4 years, although from my point of view I deal with the same jobs and the same people, so aside from developing criminal enterprise such as online fraud, the vast majority of what we do really cannot possibly change that much. Anyway, our latest change will result, next March, in the TOM. The Target Operating Model. Fuck me, how much am I getting fed up of hearing about the TOM and how TOM will "show us the future of policing".
TOM is a right cunt, I reckon.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2019 21:30:37 GMT
Tom is probably a want to be chief constable in accounting called 'Steve', balding at thirty five yo and either divorced or never had a 'friend'. I say that because we mustn't objectify and judge people's various identity/style/level of consciousness etc. I revel in my own weirdness quotient by watching yet another rerun of Star Trek into darkness while bemoaning the future lack of LLAP.
He (Or indeed sheheshewhat) might just be a right cunt.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2019 9:55:06 GMT
I think you only have to look across the Atlantic at the success of the "Make America Great Again" slogan which, no doubt, will be followed by " Keep America Great", Obama's "Hope and Change", or even further back in the UK to 1978/79; "Labour Isn't Working", to see that what you need is a catchy 3 or 4 word slogan and keep repeating it to drill it into the electorates' heads. Boris has decided his is "Get Brexit Done!". Isn't the straw-haired twatter already using that? |
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Post by Stuntman on Nov 9, 2019 14:46:50 GMT
I think he is. But his opponents are using 'Lock him up'  |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2019 14:50:09 GMT
If only...
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Post by michael on Nov 10, 2019 19:46:54 GMT
People’s vote.
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Post by PG on Nov 11, 2019 13:03:08 GMT
You beat me to it on that one. |
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